RCDC Research Roots & Wings Roundtable 1: Growing Roots through Mentoring

Building student and early career scholars’ research capacity is not predicated on the one-way transmission and passive receipt of concrete skills and knowledge. Instead, research capacity development occurs through the ongoing exchange and refinement of questions, ideas, and strategies. Mentors play an undeniably critical role this process, serving as a primary conduit to essential tangible resources (funding, space, equipment, supplies) and equally vital intangible opportunities (knowledge and training, presentations and publications, professional networking and career advice). Ideally, this relationship is mutually fruitful, insofar as it stimulates new ideas and results in shared products, and mutually meaningful, insofar as it provides mentors with outlets for generativity and mentees with sources of guidance. The expert insight from this session’s invited participants will help ground and guide a roundtable conversation of the mechanics, chemistry, and promise of mentoring for social work research and researchers. Specific points for discussion include: mentoring – and being mentored – as a skillset; diverse forms and types of mentors, including natural mentors and peer mentors; the impact of mentoring networks on the lives and careers of minority-status researchers; and the intellectual and professional value of mentoring across disciplines.